So this is for Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 (SharePoint 2007).

The situation is that I started creating a SharePoint List (datasheet) and when I made my form dropdown read from the list, it just put elements in the order that I entered them in the datasheet.

Googling this led me to browse MSDN for an hour before I realised all those experts were using programming solutions that seemed a bit over the top for something that should be so simple.

Hey presto, I found a cheat/workaround:

1. Click on the list to see your datasheet (has a MS Access icon in the top left to remind you what you're getting yourself into)
2. Go to Settings
3. Select Create View
4. Select Datasheet View (you could probably use a "Standard View", I just used the Datasheet one)
5. Give the view a name, select what columns you want the form to have (I included the IDs for functional purposes)
6. Further down the "Create View" page, there should be a Sort section, specify the column to sort by.
7. Save the view by clicking the OK button.

You'll be returned to your datasheet and it's possible it isn't in any different order. I re-checked out my InfoPath form, looked at the dropdown that was already configured to read off the sharepoint list, and it had re-ordered to what I set in the view!!! I don't really understand how it works only that it does. I think this could get complicated if you had two dropdowns reading off the same list but needed to list elements in different orders.

Applies to

• Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007

What?
I've been tasked with adding links to files located on some network shares. I want to use UNC paths such as \\myServer\myShare\myFile.doc. I could map the UNC path to a drive letter and then link to it (eg. I:\myFile.doc)but what if other users haven't mapped the same drive letter to the path? Then they won't be able to use the link.

Why?
As soon as someone suggested I setup WebDAV to do this, I thought I'd write this article to warn others that that's unnecessary and can simply open another can of worms (security-wise). There may be situations when this is better but I'm just trying to add a link to our Sharepoint 2007 portal.

How?

What?
I misunderstood what was going to happen when I started this. We have a SharePoint 2007 site and we have been asked to migrate links and calendar from an existing system. I was worried when following other instructions because I thought my personal calendar in Outlook 2007 would be completely shared with everyone who had access to the SharePoint site... It doesn't.

The following steps show you how SharePoint will open a shared calendar if you don't already have it in your Outlook 2007. Similar to you opening a shared calendar, the sharepoint calendar will sit separate to the others. Once it's in your Outlook, you can copy over events. The calendar is separate to your own and to other Exchange ones.

Eeek!

What?
Really not work related but if you know your sharepoint site:

Custom Error
http://<My_SharePoint_Site>/_layouts/MySite.aspx?Error=You%20are%20a%20jerk%20and%20SharePoint%20does%20not%20share%20with%20jerks.


Installer?

What?
This is a quick article on how to change your profile picture in your company's sharepoint site. Sounds straightforward but without being allowed to upload images or edit other profiles, each user has to do this with the permissions they've been given.

Why?
Because I can

How?

Download Connectors from dev.MySQL.com

MySQL Connector/Net

Type: .NET Framework Class Library
Usage: MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection
Manufacturer: MySQL

Standard

Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;

Default port is 3306.

Specifying port

Server=myServerAddress;Port=1234;Database=myDataBase;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;

Applies To:

• MS SQL Server 2008 R2
• MS Windows 7 Enterprise (Client)
• MS Excel 2010

What?
A really quick note on how to insert a carriage return or new line into the column name/alias (the header). It might seem trivial but these little aesthetic changes done at the database level can save some time.

Why?
I have an Excel report which dynamically gets its content from a data source located on a database on the other side of the world. I want the header in the column "Academic Week" to break across two lines so that the column doesn't expand to the width of "Academic Week" and instead expands to the width of the word "Academic".

What I have:

Academic Week    Monday      Tuesday     Wednesday   Thursday    Friday
---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
1                14-Jul-2014 15-Jul-2014 16-Jul-2014 17-Jul-2014 18-Jul-2014
2                21-Jul-2014 22-Jul-2014 23-Jul-2014 24-Jul-2014 25-Jul-2014
...

What I want:

Academic 
Week      Monday      Tuesday     Wednesday   Thursday    Friday
--------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
1         14-Jul-2014 15-Jul-2014 16-Jul-2014 17-Jul-2014 18-Jul-2014
2         21-Jul-2014 22-Jul-2014 23-Jul-2014 24-Jul-2014 25-Jul-2014
...

How?
To do this in a select query resultset, you insert the special character references "CHAR(10)" [line feed] and "CHAR(13)" [carriage return] but to do this in the name of the column heading, the answer is a much simpler one,

What?
Please note: the following article is not a solution but a page of various methods and date conversions which I try and use depending on the situation.

This is a quick article on how I got time conversion working in an SSIS package which read from a text file. Note that the example below converts a string in European Date Format (ie. "ddmmyyyy" to "dd/mm/yyyy"). Also, my data flow imports two dates one which was imported as a string (DT_WSTR) and another as a integer (DT_R8).

Why?
It took me a long time to figure this and it was only by trawling through columns that someone mentioned that maybe all the data in that column is not consistent? This made sense as I need to parse the string to extrapolate the date, month and year.

How?